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Year 10 Humanities Trip: Poland 2012

Posted 06/02/12

Poland 2012

Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau is a harrowing experience at any time. When one adds in temperatures which at one point plummeted to minus twenty-two degrees, combined with a 3.30am meeting time at Liverpool airport, the utter resilience shown by thirty-six Year 10s this past weekend is even more commendable.

Krakow is a beautiful city, full of striking architecture, wonderful restaurants and upmarket shops. But less than an hour away is the small town of Oswiecim, a name familiar to all in its notorious German form: Auschwitz. On Saturday morning, as we took our tour, shock and deep sadness very quickly displaced the high spirits of the previous day. To see the mountains of human hair, shoes, crutches and, particularly poignantly, baby clothes on display is truly sobering. To stand inside a gas chamber, where the only exit takes one through a crematorium, is chilling to the bone.

The tour of Auschwitz is largely indoors - the prison blocks are laid out like museums - but when we travelled a few miles to Birkenau, the desolation

Poland 2012

was absolute. There is no shelter, just piercing cold and crumbling barracks all around. A railway line runs for 500m to a forest, where one can make out the remains of crematoria which disposed of thousands of bodies each day. When the backlog was too great, they burned the bodies in the open air just metres from where we stood. The tour offered no respite from the barbarism of the Nazi regime, but one is always aware that what is there barely hints at the depths of the atrocities.

The extreme weather conditions certainly added to the atmosphere. It is difficult to give a true sense of how cold it was. Beads of ice formed on the end of the eyelashes, and breathing in too deeply would set off a coughing fit; it was impossible to wear enough layers. Our walking tour on Friday took us through the Jewish areas of the city. We were very grateful for the indoor respite offered by a synagogue, and when the guide suggested we take the tram back to the hotel she very quickly became a hero to all. Most of the group ventured out for some shopping on Saturday afternoon, revelling in how far a zloty would go, and we enjoyed two wonderful evening meals in a restaurant which could not have been more accommodating.

What struck us was just how easily our pupils take the most challenging of circumstances in their stride. It was a joy to be in the company of young people who are polite, respectful, mature and sensible. They shunned the noisy antics of other schools staying in our hotel, and followed instructions without question throughout. They were totally at ease with themselves and others and made our job very straightforward.

Our thanks go to Mr Hutchinson for his hours of diligent planning and paperwork. A trip of this sort is full of lots of 'what ifs' that keep a teacher awake at night, but all contingencies were more than covered. Thanks also to Mrs Alexander for her humour and patent-pending hypothermia prevention strategies!

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